Product Summary

TORQ’s 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Breakfasts have been developed alongside our long-standing Performance Nutrition range. Formulated to deliver substantial quantities of carbohydrate (125g) along with a significant 25g serving of high quality protein, our 5:1 SNAQ Breakfasts and Meals offer a comprehensive nutritional intervention to enhance glycogen storage before long endurance rides, between heavy training sessions or as a final meal before a big event. As well as providing a rich carbohydrate content, our 5:1 SNAQ Breakfasts deliver all the essential amino acids necessary to promote a positive net protein balance to ensure protein supply outweighs breakdown, which is essential for muscle maintenance and recovery.

Product Usage

Our 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Breakfasts can be enjoyed at any time of day in the run up to a hard training session or event. Simply add contents of the pack to 225ml of cold or boiling water and stir. Your SNAQ Breakfast is now ready to eat – hot or cold, it’s your choice.

Most carbohydrate-loading regimens would suggest consuming this 5:1 breakfast as a final nutritional intake the night before your event/heavy exercise bout, but if exercising later in the day, you should continue carbohydrate loading up to the exercise bout, allowing at least 3-hours prior to exercise as a digestion window.

This 5:1 SNAQ Breakfast can also be used in conjunction with our TORQ Recovery Drink or instead of a 3:1 SNAQ Breakfast or 3:1 SNAQ Meal at times of particularly high training load, as it provides a higher dose of carbohydrate to assist further with the recovery process.

Technical Information

It is well established that loading with carbohydrate prior to endurance exercise can be advantageous to performance by ensuring muscle glycogen stores are fully replenished. Modern carbohydrate loading protocols have concluded that full glycogen replenishment can occur in as little as 24 hours when 10g per kg of bodyweight of carbohydrate is consumed. For a 70kg person for instance, this equates to 700g of carbohydrate – quite a lot of carbohydrate! Our 5:1 Carbo-Load SNAQ Breakfasts offer 125g of carbohydrate, providing a notable percentage of the daily carbohydrate calories required for complete glycogen replenishment.

Our 5:1 SNAQ Breakfasts are also very low in fat ensuring that excess ‘irrelevant’ calories aren’t consumed during this process. Combine a couple of TORQ’s 5:1 SNAQ Breakfasts or 5:1 SNAQ Meals with a variety of other high carbohydrate, low fat food and drink sources in the lead up to your event/heavy exercise bout. Also consider snacking on TORQ SNAQ Bars or adding TORQ Energy Organic to foods and drinks or make it into its own neutral drink to assist in the carbohydrate loading process.

The loading of muscle glycogen will allow you to exercise at a higher intensity for a longer period of time by delaying the onset of fatigue, often known as “hitting the wall” in running or “Bonking” in cycling. This devastating loss of energy and associated drop in performance should be avoided at all costs – it really is unpleasant!

The body has a very limited amount of endogenous carbohydrate, stored within the muscle and liver. In total these carbohydrate stores equate to around 5% of the body’s total energy stores, however carbohydrate is the preferred fuel source and during exercise can equate to over 50% (or more) of total energy expended, depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise. These limited stores combined with a limited capacity to absorb and use carbohydrate during exercise can result in them becoming almost completely depleted during an intense endurance training session or competition.

Consuming a carbohydrate rich meal in the 3-4 hours leading up to an event can continue to restore glycogen across the body’s storage sites. Carbohydrate storage is saturated at 500g, with around 400g stored within skeletal muscle and around 100g stored within the liver, so a carbohydrate rich meal should be considered a few hours prior to the start of your event/heavy exercise bout where possible (liver glycogen stores can become depleted after an overnight fast). Alternatively, consuming a 5:1 SNAQ Breakfast or Meal prior to going to sleep is standard practice for events starting very early the next morning.

Protein has been shown to stimulate glycogen replenishment when consumed in conjunction with carbohydrate. The mechanisms underpinning the up-regulated glycogen re-synthesis rates is due to protein stimulating free-circuiting blood insulin, up regulating the glucose transport protein GLUT-4, allowing for more carbohydrate to pass from the blood, for storage into the muscle.

The extremely low fat content of these breakfasts ensures that both carbohydrate and protein are delivered quickly and efficiently into the blood, optimising the supply of ‘useful’ calories.

Real Food

We take our ingredient choices very seriously here at TORQ and there is no doubt that the SNAQ Breakfasts and SNAQ Meals we have created are ‘real food’. We have always held the firm philosophy that whilst dietary performance is our priority, we will always forge a natural path, which is why we have Soil Association Organic and Fairtrade Foundation approval on many of our products. Our breakfasts have been developed using oats, rice crisps and dried fruit to complement the technical whey protein crisps, which provide a high proportion of the protein calories.

Our SNAQ Breakfasts are deliberately low in fat to facilitate the rapid absorption of useful calories. They can be consumed on their own without accompaniment and will be highly functional, but we would always encourage adding some fresh fruit if consuming one of our breakfasts post-exercise, because the fibre and micronutrients contained within these fresh foods are essential for a healthy balanced diet.

As the SNAQ range develops, we intend to offer greater variety as well as customised dietary plans through our consultancy to optimise nutritional practices during training and competition, along with programs to facilitate body fat loss whilst at the same time developing muscular integrity and power. These plans won’t feature TORQ products exclusively of course, they will include recipes using other regular healthy foods too. We’re not looking to take over the world, we just know how beneficial a solid understanding of the timing and composition of one’s meals will affect physical performance and the TORQ SNAQ range has been developed with this firmly in mind.

A number of TORQ’s Performance Products are certified Organic or Fairtrade and we will be offering similar options in the future within our SNAQ range.

Travel

A primary motivation for establishing the SNAQ range at TORQ has been to fulfil the needs of serious World Class competitive athletes who travel the globe to compete at the highest level. The SNAQ range provides an ever-expanding range of foods with standardised nutritional profiles to remove the guesswork many of these athletes have to contend with every time they travel.

This principle translates to any physically active person travelling either within the UK or globally to take part in events. Being able to create healthy optimised meals easily with full knowledge of the nutritional profile, where the only external ingredient required is a source of fresh water has huge value.